PARK CITY, Utah -- Teens say the darndest things. At least they do when they've got a camera to talk into, and know their confessions may make it onto national television.
Such is the case with the subjects/creators of Chain Camera, a documentary that consists of footage shot by Los Angeles high school students.
In the film, 16 teens from John Marshall High talk about everything from racism to AIDS, alcoholism to penises, football to band practice. They sing songs about revolution in Central America, practice oral sex using bananas and rant about how the Mexicans are taking over L.A.
The made-for-Cinemax film, which premieres this week at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival, is the brainchild of Kirby Dick, best known for his cult classic Sick: The Life & Death of Bob Flanagan, Super Masochist. To collect the footage that became Chain Camera, Dick gave 10 students Hi-8 video cameras, and asked them to shoot whatever they wanted.
After a week, the students passed the cameras to the next teen -- hence the film's title. At the end of the school year, Dick had 700 hours of footage to sort through. The 90 minutes he chose offers a glimpse into the daily lives of real teenagers.
The 16 students whose footage made the final cut include Jesse, son of an alcoholic mom and politically active provocateur; Shannon, a self-proclaimed sex addict who challenges what she sees as constricting gender roles; and Fernando, a gay Latino whose two best friends are heterosexual.
"The students were very responsive," says Dick. "They really feel they have a lot to say, but they are rarely given a voice. They see themselves represented so often, but rarely get to speak for themselves."
The subjects represent a startling range of ethnicities, beliefs and ambitions, a pastiche that is emphasized through the film's structure. Rather than following a few students through a school year, which would be a more traditional documentary approach, Dick gives about five minutes to each young filmmaker.
Dick says that giving the students the lightweight, portable Hi-8 cameras to use however they wanted was a liberating experience. And, he adds, most were able to show their sophistication with the video medium -- playing with the documentary form, setting up well-composed static shots, even parodying the project.
"You could see that these students had a facility with the cameras," Dick said. "There is also this visual sense of bouncing and looking and finding. At times the image is purely an image without content. I really fell in love with this amateur roughness, as opposed to the professional, studied roughness that you see in many independent films."
Chain Camera is at times screamingly funny, as when a young raver introduces us to his phallus, and at others heartbreaking, as when we meet a young athlete who is kicked off the football team after failing math.
Dick doesn't claim his film to be an exposé of teen life, nor, he says, does it consciously counter the stereotypes of teenagers seen on TV and in the movies. Instead, Chain Camera is a kind of diaristic performance piece, starring 16 writer-actors.
"These teens are obviously aware that once they are in front of a camera, they are involved in a performance," Dick says. "In a way, it is like the Jerry Springer Show. You never know when they are acting."
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Digital all over: Don't let the din of digital dialogue in Park City fool you -- not all of the digital cinema action is taking place in the United States. As reported in Screen Digest, Norway's Committee on the Future of Cinema, a part of the Ministry of Culture, has proposed to create a fund that would be used to upgrade movie theaters for the digital age. The committee's extensive report, released last month, includes a plan for a 1 percent increase on the taxes Norwegian citizens pay on video rentals and movie tickets. Revenues would go into a fund, expected to reach about $1.2 million, that would be available, in the form of interest-free loans, to theater owners.
The loans could be used to retrofit theaters, rendering them ready for satellite transmission and digital projection of films. One motivation behind the fund is the encouragement of cultural programming in some of Norway's remote theaters.
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The card up Miramax's sleeve: It would be impossible to write a history of Sundance without a chapter on Miramax. The studio has been a central part of many essential Sundance successes and intrigues, finding and/or launching films from Reservoir Dogs to Clerks to Smoke Signals.
But 2001 hasn't been Miramax's year in Park City, at least not yet. For the first time in memory, the distributor does not have a single new film in the festival's program. However, the PR-savvy company has figured out how to generate its own splash with the Sundance media.
Today, Miramax makes news, and perhaps history, by offering its first film for download. Through SightSound.com, the former Sundance award-winner Guinevere will be available online. Guinevere, which will cost $3.49 for a 24-hour rental, is the first of 12 titles Miramax plans to put up.
SightSound representative Jennifer Pesci said her company uses a Microsoft compression program to ensure a high-quality playback (the image and sound are said to be better than VHS, and just shy of DVD). A series of security programs, Pesci added, will thwart potential pirates.
Miramax is the first studio to offer their feature films for download, a move that could point the way toward Internet movie distribution in the future.
"I think Miramax is taking a great step forward, offering an example of how their films can be distributed online," Pesci said. "Other distributors and studios might well look to this."
